Türkiye's floating power plant company appears to have found a way around resistance from South African civil society organisations to plug the country's failing grid into one of its facilities.
Karpowership is moored off the bay of Maputo, and South Africa's power utility is considering buying power that it will feed into the local grid through EDM, Eskom's Mozambican counterpart.
According to news agency AIM, Eskom is in talks with EDM to buy the output of 415 megawatts from Karpowership.
According to AIM, the offshore power station will burn low-sulphur oil.
Eskom took its decision after it declined to sign agreements to procure power from facilities that the Turkish company planned to moor off the South African coast.
Discussions with Eskom, as one of the potential off-takers, are ongoing and an offer has been submitted for their internal review, an EDM source has told News 24.
The source said that "the final off-taker is expected to be the export market due to the exacerbation of the power deficit that we are witnessing in some countries in the region, including South Africa”.
Karpowership in 2021 won a tender to supply 1 220 megawatts of power to South Africa. In addition to the environmental objections, a lawsuit and Eskom's demand for an indemnity against any adverse outcomes from corruption allegations have stalled the deal. Karpowership has described Eskom's demand as irregular and has denied any wrongdoing.
South Africa, according to official data, "urgently" needs 4 000 to 6 000 MW of additional capacity for its own power grid, with total power demand currently around 25 000 MW.
The current quantity of electricity produced by Eskom cannot meet demand, and as a result, South African consumers have been suffering rotating blackouts of 10 hours or more a day.
The government has said it wants to buy 1 000 MW of electricity from neighbouring states, many of which are suffering outages of their own.
Currently, Mozambique has an installed capacity of 2 400 MW and could reach 2 800 MW with the completion of the Temane power plant in the southern province of Inhambane.
With the Mphanda Nkuwa dam, which will be built on the Zambezi River, about 60 kilometres downstream from the existing dam at Cahora Bassa, it is expected that the country will generate an additional 4 300 MW.
Plans for Mphanda Nkuwa and for a second power station at Cahora Bassa have been stalled for decades because the only plausible customer in the region, Eskom, has refused to sign purchase agreements with Mozambique.
Eskom's refusal to make a firm commitment to purchasing more power from Mozambique is one of the main reasons for the current rolling blackouts.
